Monasticism, an institutionalized religious practice or movement whose members attempt to live by a rule that requires works that go beyond those of either the laity or the ordinary spiritual leaders of their religions. Commonly celibate and universally ascetic, the monastic individual separates himself or herself from society either by living as a hermit or anchorite (religious recluse) or by joining a community (coenobium) of others who profess similar intentions. First applied to Christian groups in antiquity, the term monasticism is now used to denote similar, though not identical, practices in religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Daoism.

The word monasticism is derived from the Greekmonachos (“living alone”), but this etymology highlights only one of the elements of monasticism and is somewhat misleading, because a large proportion of the world’s monastics live in cenobitic (common life) communities. The term monasticism implies celibacy, or living alone in the sense of lacking a spouse, which became a socially and historically crucial feature of the monastic life.

Even this aspect of monasticism does not extend beyond the cultures and languages that perpetuate the religious terminology of the so-called Abrahamic (tracing their origin to the biblical figure Abraham) or prophetic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In the Islamic world, Arabic and Persian terms that can be translated as monk or monastic do not mean “solitary,” as in the Greek. Instead, they are etymologically derived from other terms associated with monastic life in Islam (e.g., zuhd, “asceticism”). None of the many Indic terms for monk (e.g., the Sanskritapabhramsha or the Paliprakrit) mean “single” or “living alone,” though monastics in those traditions—most notably Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism—live alone or in groups that are set off from the rest of society. The etymologies of the Indian and some of the Arabic and Persian terminology connote poverty, ecstatic states of mind, dress conventions, and so on, while other terms imply single, celibate living.

Nature and significance

Monastics have been instrumental in creating, preserving, and enhancing institutions of religious and secularlearning and in transmitting cultural goods, artifacts, and intellectual skills down through the generations. Monastic institutions have also fulfilled medical, political, and military functions, though since 1500 the latter two have become completely secularized in most societies.

A definition of monasticism that covers all its forms would be so broad that particulars would have to be relegated to the analysis of specific monastic systems. Such a definition might be: religiously mandated behaviour (orthopraxy), together with its institutions, ritual, and belief systems, whose agents, members, or participants undertake voluntarily (often through a vow) religious works that go beyond those required by the religious teachings of the society at large. Such behaviour derives from the example of religious and spiritual founders who interpreted more radically the tenets that apply to all believers or to the whole society. Beyond such a statement, one can speak only of the principal characteristics of the monastic life and its institutions, since none of them is universal. Celibacy is fundamental to the majority of the world’s monastic orders but is by no means universal, as shown by the case of Buddhism in modern Japan.

Another characteristic, asceticism, is universal, provided the term is defined widely enough so as to include all supererogatory (voluntarily undertaken rather than wholly prescribed) religious practices. The truly universal characteristic of monasticism follows from its definition: the monastic separates from society, either to abide alone as a religious recluse (hermit or anchorite) or to join a community of those who have separated themselves from their surroundings with similar intentions—i.e., the full-time pursuit of the religious life in its most radical and often in its most demanding guise.

Monasticism does not exist in societies that lack a written transmitted lore. Nonliterate societies cannot have monastic institutions, because the monastic responds to an established written body of religious doctrine, which has undergone criticism and then generated countercriticism in a dialectic process that presupposes a literate, codified manipulation of the doctrine. The monastic founders and their successors may either support or oppose the official religious tradition, but the presence of such a tradition is indispensable as the matrix of all monastic endeavour.

Discovery of the true self

Overcoming imperfections

All monasticism has its mainstay in theological convictions that life in society cannot generate the spiritual consummation stipulated by the religion’s founder. In some traditions, especially in those of South Asian provenance, the true “self” is held to be clogged and concealed by imperfections—by sin, ignorance, or other theologically suggested impediments. The ego with which the layperson and the seeking neophyte identifies is not the true self, which must be discovered or uncovered. Barriers—differently conceived as matter, individuated mind, or a soul-mindaggregate defiled by sin, ignorance, and perversion—must be broken through, or a veil lifted, so that the true self, the primordial spirit, may shine forth. In most traditions this breakthrough is held to be unattainable through a conventionally good life in society, and thus a new approach must be sought. The body and the mind, which are part or all of the impediment, have to be controlled, disciplined, and chastised; hence, monastics advocate either asceticism or a set of psychophysical practices that differ radically from the normal routines of life.

Spiritual perfection

The quest for spiritual intensification is elitist—even when, as within Christian monastic orders, humility is required. Withdrawal from society is necessary because the instrumentalities of perfection cannot normally be acquired and activated in the surroundings of everyday life. The basis of monastic life is a set of spiritual precepts that either articulate the supreme value or provide support for the body and the mind on their journey toward whatever supreme consummation may be envisioned. Intense contemplation, often accompanied by physical rigours, constitutesascetic practice—i.e., prayer, worship, incantation, propitiation, and various forms of self-abasement or self-inflation. Monastics pursue all these forms of orthopraxy in enormously varied forms and degrees.

Emancipation of the self

Salvation

The ultimate purpose of the monastic endeavour is to attain a state of freedom from bondage, where both bondage and freedom are defined in theological terms. The languages of most cultures with monastic traditions possess special terms to denote bondage and freedom; a few languages adapt terms of common parlance that are then understood by members of society to refer to theologically adumbrated types of bondage and freedom. For example, the term salvation in the Christian context means deliverance from the powers of evil that arise from original sin and that beset a person’s body, mind, and soul. Notions of salvation, liberation, and emancipation are generated by, or closely related to, the way in which a society conceives of the individual’s status within the larger universe.

These concepts presuppose a specific cosmological view against which to frame the answers to the question—formulated or unformulated—“What is it that is bound and that can, should, or must be freed to achieve the most desirable state within or vis-à-vis the totality of things—e.g., the cosmos, God, and other absolutes?” The question implies spatial and temporal parameters that need to be articulated. In some of the indigenous South Asian religions, salvation can be achieved during one’s lifetime, but whether this actually happens or is delayed is irrelevant to Indian notions of liberation (Sanskrit: moksha). In Christianity and Islam, but not in Rabbinic Judaism, salvation cannot be fully achieved as long as the body exists. Thus, salvation and its semantic equivalents in other languages refer to both the present and the future in the South Asian religions but to the future above all in two of the Abrahamic ones. The life of the monastic consists of full-time seeking of salvation, in contrast to that of the “part-time” quest of the general believer.

Redemption

The concept of redemption as deliverance from the spiritual effect of past transgressions may or may not be identical with salvation, though the terms are synonymous in many contexts, notably within Christianity. As part of a vocation, the monastic seeks redemption from his or her sins and usually intercedes for others to advance their redemption. This is accomplished through personal sacrifice and may involve forms of self-mortification. The practice of self-mortification, which intensifies or stabilizes the austerities required of the monastic, is found in all monastic traditions. Whether the autocentric or the vicarious aspect of the quest is emphasized depends entirely on the doctrinal framework within which the monastic functions. In either case, however, monastics improve their chances of redemption because, in mortifying their own bodies and minds for the benefit of others, they also help their own advancement along the spiritual path. When a Jain monk volunteers to lie upon a bed infested with vermin that suck his blood, he may do so to diminish a client’s or patron’s burden of bad karma (the notion that every deed, good or bad, receives due reward or retribution), but at the same time he practices the monastic virtues prescribed for him as a monk. When a Franciscan friar (a follower of Francis of Assisi, the 12th–13th-century Italian mendicant leader) serves the poor and the sick, he also exercises his own virtues of service and humility, all of which are signs or instruments of his own redemption.

When liberation (moksha) from cycles of birth and death constitutes the foundation of a belief system, as in the basic Indian pattern of samsara (the ineluctable process of death and rebirth that can be broken only through supererogatory efforts of asceticism), monastics become disseminators of methods of liberation. In India, Tibet, and Southeast Asia the monk stood at the centre of religious life, whereas in the Western Christian world he was and is marginal to the main liturgical and ideological thrust, albeit not always deprived of high social status. In principle, the importance of the monastic life in a religious system (if not always in the social system) is related to its eschatology (doctrine of last things). Thus, if the state of existence after salvation is continuous with the present life, as in the Abrahamic religions, then the monastic will have less prominence than would be had in belief systems, such as those of South Asia, in which salvation implies a different state that cancels finitude and eradicates all traces of separate individual existence.

Social and institutional purposes

Conquest of the spiritual forces of evil

In most monastic traditions, social goals interact with spiritual ones, and emphasis alternates between one or the other depending on the founders’ interpretation of the theological framework. The earliest Christian hermits of the Egyptian desert (c. 250–500 ce), known as the “Desert Fathers”—Anthony of Egypt, Paul of Thebes, Pachomius of the Thebaid, and others—presaged later monastic institutions. Although the early hermits, mostly native Egyptian peasants, were inspired by the example of famous recluses and by biblical exemplars such as Elijah and Jesus (during his 40 days in the wilderness), their rigorous asceticism generated an impulse (first formalized by Pachomius) toward cenobitism (literally “lying [i.e., eating, sleeping, living] together”) and a life based on military models, which appear in virtually all monastic traditions. The community was viewed as composed of soldiers of the spirit, who were combatting the forces of evil by facing the temptations of the Devil in the desert. Early Christian monasticism spread beyond Egypt and assumed different forms, most famously in the example of the Syrian ascetic Simeon Stylites (c. 390–459), who dwelt nearly 40 years atop a pillar one metre across.

Much of the zeal of early Christian monastics may have been anticipated by the Jewish Qumrān community, made famous in the 20th century by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The community is usually identified with the Essenes, a religious group that flourished in the Judaean desert between 150 bce and 70 ce and was the chief exemplar of Jewish monasticism. The Qumrān ascetics considered themselves to be the true, unpolluted carriers of orthodox Judaism and denounced the Jerusalem priesthood, which they characterized as defiled, spurious, and unclean, sullied by Hellenism, and potentially heretical (contrary to orthodoxy). This may have been the first conflict between a proto-monastic elite and an urban sacerdotal establishment in which the interpretation of the canonical teachings was under dispute. Rigorous asceticism, communal prayer, and common work were the rule, though celibacy may not as yet have been expected of members of the community.

Improvement of society

By and large, monastic institutions may have aided the progress of civilization, even though they often have been blamed for obstructing and retarding it. As an instrument for the creation, preservation, and transmission of secular and religious traditions, monasticism played an important role in society, especially in those cultures that favoured cenobite institutions. Monasticism’s function as a propagating or proselytizing agent of the religious tradition, however, is by no means universal nor even regionally uniform. The role of monks and mendicant friars and their orders in the arts, sciences, and letters, as well as in the pedagogical and the therapeutic social services, is thus discussed under the headings of the diverse monastic systems (see belowVarieties of monasticism in the religions of the world).

Institutional centres for religious leadership

In some religions, monasteries serve as training centres for institutional religious leaders. There is, however, a clear dichotomy between training secular clergy (e.g., bishops and priests) and training regular clergy (e.g., abbots and brothers). Even though the distinction may seem to be blurred in the Roman Catholic and Eastern (both Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox) traditions, most Christian monastics, both men and women, continue to be laypersons (i.e., “brothers” and “sisters” who take vows but are not ordained). Indeed, the Christian tradition is unique in that its monastic training produces priests as well as monastics. In all Indian religions, by contrast, there is an unbridgeable gulf between the priestly and the monastic careers and their concomitant institutions. The common denominator lies in the supererogatory status of the monastic life. If churches and seminaries prepare ecclesiastical leaders, teachers, and intellectuals, monasteries may train people to whom the same terms apply but with a difference: at least into the 20th century, the monk or nun was usually thought to be more radical and less compromising than the ecclesiastic or church functionary.

Other purposes

Apart from the redemptive, spiritual, and social goals of monastic systems, most of them tolerate peripheral goals that may be rather mundane. A Tibetan Vajrayana (Tantric or Esoteric) Buddhist lamasery (monastic religious centre), for example, may serve not only as a dispenser of spiritual counsel but also as a bank, a judicial court, a school, and a social centre for the laity. Some unusual nonreligious functions for which monasteries have been used include coaching in wrestling (in some Hindu orders) and the preparation of perfumes (in the Muslim Sanūsiyyah order).

Types of monasticism

Organizational or institutional types

Eremitic

There have been a variety of types of monastic institutions. Arising first was the eremitic type, including the early Christian hermits or anchorites; the actual or legendary rishis (“seers”) of Vedic India (pre-800 bce); some of the earliest Jain shramanas (“ascetics”), particularly Mahavira and Parshvanatha, the semi-historical founders of Jainism; the Daoist recluses of early southwestern China; and sporadic hermits in the various areas of the modern world—such as Gauribala in Sri Lanka, the Mother in Puducherry, India, and Western converts to Asian belief systems without organized monastic trappings. Some European and American neo-mystics also should be included in this class.

Common to all true hermits and eremitical institutions is an emphasis on living alone, on pursuing a highly regularized contemplative life (with individually generated, often experimental spiritual disciplines), and on frequently idiosyncratic and sometimes heretical interpretations of scriptural or disciplinary codes. Self-mortification and individual austerities can be detected, but these are incidental to the eremitical style.

Quasi-eremitic

The lauras (communities of anchorites) of early Christianity in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Greece, and Cyrenaica—perpetuated today in the Mount Athos (a monastic complex founded in Greece in the 10th century) tradition—as well as the small-scale ashrams (religious retreats) of monastic Hinduism since at least 300 bce are best called quasi-eremitic. Similar in function were the semiformal congregations of the early Buddhist monks and nuns, which preceded the establishment of the sangha (monastic order or community). Common elements of quasi-eremitic monasticism include a loose organizational structure with no administrative links to mother institutions and no external hierarchies. This type of monasticism marks a transition between the eremitic and the cenobitic; in many cases, certain groups displayed eremitic and cenobitic features alternately, either during different annual seasons or on the occasion of special gatherings. For example, in early 4th-century Egypt and Syria, hermits attached to the Christian lauras lived alone during the week but gathered on Sunday (sometimes also on Saturday) for worship and fellowship. In the 20th century some Nepalese followers of Gorakhnath (8th century ce) lived as recluses most of the time but formed a quasi-military association on certain occasions—such as the Kumbh Mela, or all-Indian monastic assemblies, held every sixth year at certain pilgrimage centres. During these periods they were organizationally indistinguishable from the most highly structured cenobitic units at the conventions.

Cenobitic

It is probably not wrong to equate proper “monasticism” with cenobitism. There seems to be a correlation between a formulated rule, or set of rules (known as regula in the Christian orders and as vinaya and shila in the Buddhist canon), and cenobitic institutions; eremitic and quasi-eremitic settings lack or diverge from formulated rules and give more scope to the individual’s self-imposed disciplines. In fact, the first Christian cenobitical communities were based on a rule prepared by Pachomius (c. 290–346) of the Thebaid, the traditional founder of organized cenobitism in the Western world, who is said to have built nine monasteries for men and two for women that were said to have had more than 7,000 residents. Smaller monasteries for men and women emerged in Cappadocia under the influence of the Greek theologian St. Basil the Great (c. 330–379), who composed the first widely authoritative monastic rule in Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The basis for all subsequent Eastern Christian (Greek) monastic institutions, it was simpler than some of the regulae of the orders founded in later centuries in western Europe. Avoiding the extreme austerities of the Desert Fathers, St. Basil’s rule was strict but not severe. Its asceticism was dedicated to the service of God, which was to be pursued through community life and obedience. Liturgical prayer and manual and mental work were obligatory. The Rule of St. Basil also enjoined or implied chastity and poverty, though these were far less explicitly stated than in the later regulae. Basil’s sister St. Macrina (c. 327–380) initiated monastic communities for women and “double houses” for both women and men.

What Basil’s rule was for Eastern monachism, St. Benedict’s was for early Western monasticism. Benedict of Nursia (c. 480–547) was a practical Roman whose rule, which was based on an earlier monastic rule known as the Rule of the Master, is often recognized for its humanity and moderation. His regula, which enjoined poverty, chastity, obedience, and stability, was followed until the 13th century by diverse orders, including the Knights Templars and most other paramilitary aristocratic orders, and it remains the rule of the Benedictine order today. It is notable for providing an effective model of monastic government and for its requirement, adopted by all subsequent Roman Catholic monastic orders, that the individual monk not own property.

The core of canonical literature in the southern BuddhistTheravada (Pali: “Way of the Elders”) tradition is vinaya (regulations concerning comportment), which is said to be the Buddha’s own formulation of more than 200 rules for his monks. These regulations constitute the distinguishing feature of Buddhist (particularly Theravada) monasticism; strictly speaking, there is no Buddhist monasticism apart from the life lived according to the vinaya. The vinaya has always exacted more intense asceticism from women than from men because, according to tradition, the historical Buddha did not at first desire women monastics and laid extra obligations on them when he conceded their existence.

The number of requirements in the rules of the monastic traditions of South Asia varies greatly. The later Brahmanic orders—such as the order founded by the Hindu reformer Shankara (8th century ce)—contain hardly any “rules” except an implicit renunciation of worldly desires, a detachment from society, and an indifference toward the “opposites,” such as pleasure and pain. The 6th-century-bceJain reformer Mahavira, who probably flourished at least half a century before the Buddha, established the core Jain order, giving it a very elaborate rule that goes into minute regulations for monastic residence, restricting the itinerant monk’s sojourn to one week at a time in a village and one month in a town and requiring that he not sleep more than three hours and that he spend the day and the rest of the night in expiation, meditation, studying Jain scripture, and begging for alms. Some scholars believe that the Jain rule provided the model for all monastic rules in India and thus indirectly for the monastic traditions in all the Asian countries that came under India’s religious tutelage.

The Essenes, regardless of whether they were identical with the Qumrān settlement, probably had a written rule. They were highly formalistic, emphasizing ritualistic purity, with ablutions prescribed for the members, and they maintained a rigorous adherence to the letter of the Jewish ritualistic and legal books Leviticus and the Deuteronomy.

At the opposite pole of rigour, certain hippie communes of the 1960s and later, insofar as they sought religious experience, can be classified as cenobitic organizations. In their case, growing food, preparing and consuming it jointly, and sharing common dormitory facilities were essential elements of the cenobitic structure, though they failed to take a vow of chastity or indeed any formal vow.

Quasi-monastic

Paramilitary, or quasi-monastic, associations are another type of monastic group. Whereas most Christian orders of this sort also fulfilled medical or healing commitments, non-Christian monastic orders of this type did not cater to the sick. The Knights Templars, a Crusading order founded in the Holy Land in the early 12th century, became the most prestigious and later the most defamed aristocratic organization in medieval Europe. Identifying themselves as “poor knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon,” the Templars took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience; the foundational commitment was the protection and the guidance of pilgrims en route to and in the Holy Land. The military model was evident in their hierarchical structure—there were chaplains, knights, and sergeants under a grand master—and their numbers grew rapidly, in part because of the support of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who wrote their rule. The fall of the last Crusader stronghold, Acre, in 1291 and highly sensationalized rumours that the knights denied Jesus Christ, spat on the cross, and were kissed on the mouth, the navel, and the base of the spine at their initiation into the order enabled the French king Philip IV the Fair, who coveted the Templars’ immense wealth, to bring about their destruction in the early 14th century.

The Templars were inspired by the Knights Hospitallers (or Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem), founded at the end of the 11th century. The classic nursing order, the Hospitallers were probably the first to provide genuine medical and hospital services, initially for pilgrims to Jerusalem. Their first foundation was the Hospital Saint-Antoine-de-Viennois (c. 1100), which was followed by foundations in southern France, Germany, and Italy. Their chief officers were ordained priests, but the majority of members were nonsacerdotal “hospitallers,” or lay brothers and sisters. They followed the Benedictine rule until 1231, meeting under an elected master and at an annually rotating chapter-general of “commanders”; the order switched to the “modern” rule of St. Augustine in 1247. Changing conditions in the eastern Mediterranean forced the Hospitallers to move their headquarters from Jerusalem to Acre and then to Cyprus and Rhodes. After moving to Malta in 1530, they became known as the Knights of Malta.

The Teutonic Order (German: Deutscher Ritterorden), founded in Jerusalem in 1189/90, enjoyed an independent relationship with Rome and with the papal administrative bureaucracy, the Curia. This arrangement was specially defined by more than 100 papal bulls. The grand master, who enjoyed the same rights as a prince of the Holy Roman Empire, was assisted by five “grand commanders.” The organization was composed of knights (usually noblemen), priests, and serving brothers and was established to do hospital service, later focusing more on military service. After the fall of Acre, the order moved its headquarters to various places in Europe. But the order revived its military function starting in the early 13th century, when European rulers, including the Holy Roman emperor Frederick II, authorized it to do battle against the Altaic and the Prussian pagan peoples. The order went into decline during the Reformation and was completely dissolved by Napoleon in the early 19th century, though it was revived by the Austrian emperor in 1834. It survives today in Germany and Austria as a service organization.

The popular but mistaken identification of Tibetan monks as lamas has obscured the highly segmented structure of the Buddhist clergy in that country. Among the Khamba (khams pa) of eastern Tibet, for example, men with minimal monastic initiation (lung) organized themselves as a military or police force to protect monastic territory and the unarmed higher-initiated clergy. They were conspicuous during Tibet’s confrontation with the Chinese communists from 1959 to 1965.

In the Islamic world, the mystical orders (Sufi) and the partially overlapping dervish (darwīsh) assemblies constituted a living critique of formalistic, rigorous orthopraxy oriented toward the Qurʾān (the Islamic holy book). The Sufis sought to experience divinity through meditative or ecstatic practices such as the dhikr (the chanting of the names of God). These practices were accompanied by various physical routines such as dances and songs and reportedly sometimes by the ingesting of drugs, usually cannabis (e.g., hashish). The Turkish Bektashi (Bektaşi) excelled in poetry and in humorous repartee. In Libya and other northeastern African countries, the Sanūsiyyah (Senussi) order of Sufis not only antagonized the Wahhābiyyah (a generic name for orthopraxy in Islam rather than a term denoting the specific group that emerged in what is now Saudi Arabia in the 18th century) but also achieved impressive stature during the early 20th century by opposing Italian colonial forces in Libya. Rather than seeking salvation through adherence to orthopraxy, as most Muslims do, these orders cultivated communion with God through mystical practices. “Not I and God but only God” was one of their mottoes.

At the time of its foundation, Sikhism did not encourage monasticism; Guru Nanak (1469–1539), the founder of the religion, was a married man, and so were most of the subsequent nine Gurus. In the late 17th century, however, the Nirmal-akhada was created in imitation of the celibate monastic orders of Hinduism and organized on the same principles. Underlying this development was the Hindu tendency to create monastic corollaries to lay teachings; the process was repeated in India in later times, as exemplified by the Arya Samaj, a Hindu reform society founded by Dayananda Sarasvati in 1875. Although Dayananda was a monk in the order of the Dashnami Sannyasi (“Holy Men of the Ten Names”), he discouraged monasticism. In response to Hindu cultural pressure, monks have been ordained in his organization since the early decades of the 20th century.

An older quasi-monastic and basically military organization among the Sikhs is the Nihang Sahibs, created to fight Muslim incursions into the Sikh communities of the Punjab. The Nihang Sahibs wear military uniforms of blue and yellow robes whose design has remained unchanged since the 17th century. The Nihang Sahibs are married, but during their temporary active service as nihangs (from Persian, “crocodile”) they abstain from sexual intercourse and live in a cenobitic manner.

Mendicant friars and orders

Although mendicancy would seem to preclude cenobitism, many orders are mendicant and cenobitic at different times. The Hindu and Buddhist official orders are really both. Buddhist monastics in Sri Lanka, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, and Cambodia can be termed non-wandering mendicants, for the monks fan out in the early morning to collect food in their alms bowls but return to their houses to eat in a cenobitic fashion.

The Sanskrit term parivrajaka (“walking around”) connotes mendicant status and as a title is carried by a large number of Hindu monastic organizations. It has canonical sanction: the Hindu scriptural definition of a monk is “[one who] having renounced the desire for sons, for wealth, the fear of social opprobrium and the craving for social approval, he sallies forth, begging for food.” During his training the neophyte lives in a strictly cenobitic setting; on subsequent peregrinations he begs for food, which is part of his advanced discipline, and he eats alone. Here also there is a blend between the contemplative and the preaching life; the different Hindu orders place varying emphases on the one or the other, a distribution of functions that is similar to that within some Christian orders. The vow of chastity is spelled out for Hindu mendicants, but poverty and obedience are implied rather than enjoined. Hindu monastic organization is much looser than either the Buddhist or the Christian, and in this sense it resembles the earliest eremitic and quasi-eremitic types in Judaism and Christianity.

Mendicants developed also in the Christian world. They should be referred to as friars rather than monks, because in Christianity the term monk implies fixity of residence and friars are by definition peripatetic. The Franciscan friars (Greyfriars), founded by St. Francis of Assisi (1181/82–1226), with their numerous subdivisions (e.g., Conventuals, Observants, and Capuchins), and the Dominicans, founded by St. Dominic (c. 1170–1221), were and continue to be the most powerful statutory mendicant orders. St. Francis founded his order with the aim of living in evangelical poverty in imitation of Jesus and the Apostles. The Dominicans, while also taking vows of poverty, emerged to combat the Cathars, a religious movement in southwestern France that was deemed heretical; they were thus primarily a preaching and teaching order. The synthesis of contemplation and the apostolic ministry is prominent in these orders; the Dominican motto “To contemplate and to give the fruits of contemplation to others” is significant.

Other organizational or institutional types

Whether membership is permanent or temporary distinguishes different monastic institutional types but has little bearing on organizational structure. In the Theravada Buddhist order (sangha) of Thailand, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka, men join a monastery for an unspecified period of time. The Dhammayut, the smaller and more highly ascetic of the two sections of the Thai sangha, prescribes minimum periods of three months to a year; the Mahasanghikas, who form the monastic majority, do not specify any duration. Lifelong monastic vows are, in those regions, a matter of individual choice, and the order does not take any official stance on them. This differs radically from Roman Catholic orders, as well as from the Hindu organizations that initiate members by the viraja-homa (i.e., the Vedic rite of renunciation); since the initiate is declared dead by this ceremony, he cannot return to the world of the living (i.e., to society). Dispensations, on the other hand, are given—though reluctantly—to Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox monks and nuns who want to leave their orders. In the Hindu monastic code, there can be no such dispensation—monks who return to society are highly stigmatized.

Hierarchical and status types

Sacerdotal

In addition to organizational and institutional forms, a typology is needed to classify monastic status and hierarchy. The first and most important such division is between sacerdotal and nonsacerdotal full-time supererogatory specialists. Most of the canon-based, or scriptural, religions of the world distinguish between priests and nonpriestly practitioners. In the case of Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christianity, the distinction is crucial at the sacerdotal end but incidental at the monastic end. Monks who are ordained as priests are full priests and full monks; monks and nuns who are not ordained are nevertheless full monastic members, sharing the same vows and the same discipline. Islam does not officially recognize monastic status, nor does it have priests—the imam is the leader in prayer, but he takes no special vows or ordinations. The dichotomy is also inapplicable to Rabbinic Judaism, which has neither priests nor monastics.

The situation is markedly different in the religions of India. In Hinduism only a male person born into a Brahman (priestly) caste is entitled to perform sacerdotal Vedic ritual; this requires no further initiation than that given to all high-caste boys. A monk, however, cannot perform any sacerdotal service, even if he was born into a Brahman family—monastic ordination cancels his sacerdotal status. Hindu monastic organizations ordain monks in various ways, and the types of ordination are numerous; but monastic and priestly ordinations are mutually exclusive and totally distinctive in type, scope, and intent. The Brahman priest supports and enhances the mundane well-being of his client and the worldly estate of society through Vedic and other rituals. The monk, on the other hand, withdraws totally from the mundane in a radical sense by rejecting sacerdotal commitments, and he recommends such withdrawal to any of his clients who seek a long-term perspective.

Secondary and tertiary orders

The notion of secondary and tertiary orders was developed in the Roman Catholic world, though by analogy it could be extended to non-Christian cultures. The triple division within the Franciscans and the Dominicans epitomizes the following hierarchy: the first order consists of ordained priests and brothers who are not priests; the second consists of contemplative nuns; and the third consists of laymen and laywomen— “tertiaries”—who live under abridged, or “minor,” vows that may include celibacy. In the Theravada Buddhist world, such tertiaries have parallels in the sangha, which is similar to the first orders of Dominicans and Franciscans. Whereas the full-fledged Buddhist monk takes more than 200 vows, part-time monks (shramanas) take fewer than one-third that number. In Myanmar, quasi-monastic but unordained practitioners (upasakas) may stay at monasteries and participate in the meditative and congregational activities of the monks for a limited period upon payment of a nominal fee to the bursar of the cloister.

In all monastic traditions of the world, the status of nuns is considerably lower than that of monks. The only possible exception is that of certain famous saintly women in Hindu India, today and in the past, who were known for their extreme piety or, more importantly, for their physical-mental (yogic) and mesmeric (hypnotic) powers. These women gained high charismatic (spiritually influential) status that placed them, as individuals, above male monastics. Yet, with the possible exception of the double monasteries of medieval Europe, there is no truly hierarchical superiority whereby a nun, be she ever so exalted, could have disciplinary powers over a monk or even over a male novice. Though the Roman Catholic tradition has refused equal status to nuns because women cannot obtain sacerdotal ordination, the Indian attitude concerning the inferiority of female monastics rests on notions of ritual impurity—women, being innately defiled, polluted through the menstrual cycle, never gain access to the ritual complex; hence, their status is much lower—even though some noncanonical texts (e.g., the Bhagavadgita) assert spiritual, though not ritualistic, equality of women and men.

The Buddha apparently at first refused to allow women postulants (potential monks) admission to monastic orders; it is said that when his disciples and sponsors had succeeded in establishing women’s communities, he declared that this augured the decline of the orders. This did not discourage women either then or later. Buddhist nunneries are not numerous, and their ratio to male convents does not exceed 1:20 in any Buddhist country. The Buddhist monastic attitude toward nuns is one of embarrassed silence except in Japan, where the general loosening of monastic rules has worked in women’s favour.

Tertiary orders in the Christian world were established above all by noblewomen who combined piety with pioneering medical knowledge. These women promoted religious pursuits that approached the monastic in intensity of dedication. The term tertiary did not originally evoke gender, but by the 13th century it usually referred to women, often of aristocratic background, who led a saintly life in a cenobitic setting but were inspired by humanitarian ideals rather than by a longing for sheer contemplation. Women belonging to such groups were the first nurses, and their tradition has been continued in all Christian nursing orders and is emulated by some non-Christian orders, such as the Hindu Ramakrishna Mission. The humanitarian vocation also dominates branches of male tertiaries such as those of the Dominican and Carmelite orders.

Although the hierarchical arrangements in the Christian West must be viewed as serving organizational or managerial purposes, there is much greater variation in Asian orders. Among religions derived from the teachings and practices of India, a true hierarchy comparable to that of the Christian orders is found only in the Tibetan ecclesiastic setting. Contrary to popular belief, the lamas are not simply high-ranking monks but are viewed as incarnations of one aspect of the Buddha or of a teacher who in turn was such an incarnation. Although Tibetan monasteries have prided themselves on the presence of one or more lamas, they really stood above and outside the operational hierarchy, and their function was and is advisory rather than executive.